Dear Mamma,
I sit here in a beauty salon, waiting for that dreaded beauty ritual – the only one I still drag myself to once a month- in which a woman is going to twist a bit of thread and use that to ruthlessly tug and pull at my eyebrows to coax them into a shape that’ll hopefully make me prettier. I used to be ambivalent about it – pain has never been an issue for me – but of late, I find myself resisting it. Why? I ask myself. Why do I put myself through this? Today, this feeling is heightened because even as I sit here, there’s a woman who’s brought in her teenage daughter for what appears to be her first threading session. “It’s okay,” the mother coos, “just let me know if it hurts too much.” The girl, who was buried in her books just minutes ago, looks like she would be anywhere but here (I can tell from her eyes, which is the only thing I see because she’s wearing a mask, of course) The mother tugs her skin and holds it for her while the beautician continues plucking and threading. And just like that, another young girl has been taught to equate pain with beauty.
I remember the first time I went to get my eyebrows shaped. I was seventeen, going on eighteen, and really, really wanted to feel grown up – just like Baidew. I drove the scooter that day, to take her to the salon. I sat and watched all these women getting their hair done, their eyebrows done, getting facials. I remember thinking to myself how it looked like hard work, being pretty. And then suddenly, before I knew it, the words slipped out of my mouth “I think I wanna get my eyebrows done too.” Baidew looked at me quizzically. “Are you sure?” She asked. That was the moment- my chance to back out. But all eyes were on me, or at least it felt that way. Which is why I shushed that little voice inside my head telling me to run, run for the hills, and instead took my seat on that wooden chair. My eyes watered that first time – it really hurt. But when I saw my reflection in the mirror, all I could think was, who is this grown up young woman? The woman in the mirror was me, and yet, not me. How could something so simple as shaping my eyebrows make so much of a difference? Little did I know – that first time set the tone for the lifetime. And here I am, 18 years later, still waiting for my turn on the chair so a woman can tug and pull and pluck my eyebrow into shape.
Do you remember Mamma, the year before the wedding how my beautician made it her ultimate goal to make me the bride with the best skin ever? And how I religiously got facials every month, until my skin looked like porcelain? Only to break out into rashes the day after the wedding! How miserable I was during the reception, my face red hot and itchy! I still look at the photos of me from that evening, and wonder how I survived it at all. But then, little was I to know that it would be the last time my skin would get that sort of pampering.
That first time in Hanoi when I went to the neighbourhood salon wanting to get my eyebrows shaped, I realised that A) because I didn’t speak Vietnamese and they didn’t speak English, even communicating what I wanted was an issue and B) they had no idea what threading even was. When the lady brought out a small blade and asked me to lean back so she could shape my brows, I almost cried. My eyebrows bushy as ever, I returned home. And the first time I had a fight with my brand new husband, I went to the same salon and got myself the most ridiculously expensive facial ever – to prove what point I don’t know. For the next ten months, I rocked the bushy eyebrows style. Which is probably why now when I look back at those photos from my newly wed days, I look so heartbreakingly young. I look like a little girl playing wife in her tiny little kitchen. But then again, maybe I was that little girl.
I digress, Mamma. But coming back to the point (was there ever a point, though?) I want to say thank you. Thank you for not being the mother who dragged me to the beauty salon to get my eyebrows done, and thank you for also not being the mother who scolded me for choosing to do so. Thank you for understanding when I wanted to make face packs for myself and wasted quite a lot of masoor dal in the process, but thank you also for not pushing me to do any of that, for not once commenting, “You look so tan, don’t you wanna do something about it?” Thank you, for not batting an eyelid when you saw my ankle tattoo for the first time – which, by the way, was three whole months after I actually got it. And thank you for not banishing me from the household when you found out about my belly button piercing – a whole year after I got it. But thank you, most of all, for that gloomy evening a month after Mon was born, when I cried about how ugly I feel, with my still bloated belly and bushy eyebrows and messy hair. And you said, “Look at this tiny creature in your arms. Do you think it matters to her how you look? You are her world, her entire universe, and that’s all that matters.”
Thank you for teaching me, by example, what it really means to be beautiful Mamma. Thank you, for being you.
Love,
Mamon.
Of dreaming, dabbling and daring... 